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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26388640">Blood &amp; Cotton</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cryptographic_Delurk/pseuds/Cryptographic_Delurk'>Cryptographic_Delurk</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Bloodplay, F/M, Implied Safeword, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Knifeplay, Masochism, Masochist Merrill, Service Top Anders, Vaginal Sex, hematolagnia, if you’re thinking this isn’t absolute schmoopy fluff you’re wrong, passing references to foot fetishism and piss play though neither is the subject of the fic, they’re both pretty switchy at the end of the day</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 09:29:10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,077</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26388640</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cryptographic_Delurk/pseuds/Cryptographic_Delurk</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p><br/>The bed is too big and too fancy for some inn in some backwater village in the Anderfels. It would be a shame to waste it.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Anders/Merrill (Dragon Age)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Blood &amp; Cotton</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I found the lack of Merrill in the bloodplay and knifeplay tags kind of offensive, so I’m here to try to fix that a little. It’d be appreciated if someone wanted to take up the torch and continue with some other Merrill ships, just sayin’.</p><p>And it should go without saying that this isn’t a how-to guide, and please be careful with things like knives and spines and consent irl.</p><p>Read &amp; Relax.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="western">The bed is too big and too fancy for some inn in some backwater village in the Anderfels. It could fit the two of them side by side, with room to spare. And instead of rough hemp, the sheets are honest-to-Mythal Par Vollen cotton, sewn tight in soft little threads. It would be a shame to waste it.</p><p class="western">Anders presses kisses to her cheek and her neck and her shoulder, and Merrill squirms and giggles and gapes a little, like a fish. It would be nice to have something on her mouth too. But Anders moves down to her thighs, and then bends a leg up to kiss the bottom of her foot, because that’s the kind of strange thing he’s into.</p><p class="western">It is lovely, and it would be a shame to waste the opportunity. With Anders focussed on her legs, she reaches over to the nightstand, because they’re never safe and it wouldn’t do for them to not have a means to protect themselves within reach.</p><p class="western">Anders watches her as he kisses her ankle, but seems cued in that nothing is truly amiss by the slow and lazy way she moves. She presents him the knife. Its handle is shaped from antler and carved with patterns of halla, and its blade is obsidian. It’s a weighty gift. Merrill has fewer mementos of the Dalish the more time passes, and wouldn’t usually let anyone else touch it.</p><p class="western">Anders considers it with a similar gravity, as he sits back on his knees, accepts it with both hands, and pulls it free of its sheathe. She wonders if it’s for the same reasons.</p><p class="western">He seems very concerned, and Merrill lifts the foot that’s currently resting on his shoulder and boops him in the nose with her big toe. Anders gives a look of mild irritation, and Merrill giggles as he swats her away.</p><p class="western">“Is this really what you want?” Anders asks.</p><p class="western">“Cut me,” she says.</p><p class="western">Anders frowns. “It’s going to ruin the sheets.”</p><p class="western">“It would be a shame to waste them.”</p><p class="western">“The innkeeper’s going to think we’re doing blood magic rituals,” Anders points out. “They’re already suspicious. They’ll be calling the Templars on us.”</p><p class="western">“Then we’ll burn the sheets afterwards and pay to have them replaced,” Merrill says sensibly.</p><p class="western">“With what coin, I wonder?”</p><p class="western">“I’m sure Isabela can find some. She’s very good at finding coin.”</p><p class="western">“What she’s good at is stealing, sweetheart.” But there’s a smile pulling at Anders’s lips, finally, and Merrill knows he’s considering it. “No blood magic,” he says.</p><p class="western">“If it bothers you that much,” Merrill agrees.</p><p class="western">Anders draws his fingers up the blade and looks at her darkly. “Is this even about sex for you?”</p><p class="western">“Maybe,” Merrill answers. “Depends. Are you going to fuck me while you do it?”</p><p class="western">“If I feel like it.”</p><p class="western">“Are you going to eat me out afterwards?” Merrill asks. “Are you going to ask me to pee on your face again?”</p><p class="western">Anders winces, and Merrill laughs. But it’s fine. That’s what Anders always does, right up until the moment he’s sucking his own cum out of her, and she’s grinding her hips down on him, and he’s begging, begging her for it.</p><p class="western">Anders rearranges the knife in his hand. He’s slow at first when he leans over, and then it’s a quick moment as he seizes her by the hair and tilts her head back to press the knife against her throat. Merrill lets out a gasp of fear, and then descends into a fit of anxious giggles.</p><p class="western">“Is this was you want, sweetheart?” he asks.</p><p class="western">Merrill tries not to move her face, her torso. But she wiggles her hips and tries to rub her thighs together for the illusion of friction.</p><p class="western">Anders laughs with exasperated fondness. “You really are a fool to trust me.”</p><p class="western">“I don’t think so, vhenan.” Merrill giggles more, because he’s either really good or really bad at being scary.</p><p class="western"><em>It would only take a little</em>, Anders thinks. The barest of cuts on her neck, the second he crossed the line, and she could blast him back with magic. She might attempt to thrall him, he thinks, although he’s not sure it would take – what with Justice inside him to fight her hold. He’s not sure he knows would would win in an all out fight between them. He hopes never to find out.</p><p class="western">“It’s not only me,” Anders reminds. “You know you’re trusting Justice too.” He hangs his head in doubt.</p><p class="western">“I trust him too,” Merrill says.</p><p class="western">“You’re a fool to.”</p><p class="western">“You’d trust him too, if you could talk to him.”</p><p class="western">Her confidence is infectious. Anders pulls the knife back minutely and leans down to kiss her. She giggles as his nose bumps against hers, and her eyes flutter shut as she sucks on his tongue.</p><p class="western">He pulls away slowly and then, still holding the knife more or less in place, leans up so his breathe ghosts across her ear. His voice is smooth and husky. “Where do you want it, sweetheart?”</p><p class="western">There are some places he won’t do it, where he won’t cut her. Not her hands, or her face, or the insides of her upper arms where her old scars – the ones that were there before Audacity – are. He’s pre-emptively trying to think of a way to say no to them, a way that will make him seem commanding instead of nervous so as not to ruin their little love game.</p><p class="western">Thankfully it doesn’t come to that.</p><p class="western">“I’ll let you decide, vhenan.” Merrill smiles, with some amount of magnanimity and challenge both.</p><p class="western">She’s doing it to frustrate him, Anders knows. So he gives her what she wants and grabs her in too sharp and too rough a movement to flip her face down on the mattress. He turns the knife in his palm, so the blade is facing away from Merrill, and gives one last squeeze on the back of her neck – the light spread of his fingers and a little pinch that only catches skin. A threat rather than anything that might accidentally hurt her.</p><p class="western">Merrill’s still giggling, but she behaves as he sets the knife down and focusses on rearranging her. He finishes turning the parts of her that are still tilted sideways, so she’s lazing comfortably on her stomach, with her right cheek smooshed against the sheets.</p><p class="western">She doesn’t move her arms, one at her side and the other bent beside her head, but Anders can see her nails raking lightly at the sheets and pulling at stray threads.</p><p class="western">He pries her legs apart, and sits between them the best he can, and presses his hands under her hips to tilts her pelvis up a little, just so he can see her better – she’ll be so pretty once she’s wet and ready for him. Merrill seems willing to indulge this, given that she continues to hold her butt scrunched up for him even when he pulls his hands away.</p><p class="western">And then it’s just what she’s asked for. He cups his hand and claps it down across the back of her right thigh, just hard enough to hurt – though the sound probably stings more than the impact. He can feel her jolt a little, and then relax as he rubs his hand over her in little circles. “I’m thinking here,” he announces. Merrill’s thighs are a little bulbous, perhaps not thick compared to most people’s, but almost disproportionately so compared to the slender boniness of her upper body. It’s not really pretty, but it does get his dick hard. Enough that Anders feels something akin to <em>lucky</em> as he kneads her quadriceps.</p><p class="western">“Did you want a massage, Anders?” Merrill asks. Though it could hardly be a serious question, because when did Anders ever not? “If <em>I</em> had wanted a massage,” Merrill continues, “I would have asked for that instead.”</p><p class="western">Anders leans over her and curls his finger around a ringlet of her stringy hair. “Impatient,” he tugs it a bit as he scolds, and then presses a lingering kiss to her shoulder. But he doesn’t make her wait any longer than that, and leans back to reach for the knife. He presses the blade flat against her thigh, and won’t let himself hesitate before tilting it to dig the edge under the skin.</p><p class="western">Merrill hisses through clenched teeth and tenses, but Anders doesn’t pause as he drags the blade the rest of the way across her thigh, and it’s only a moment before she relaxes limp and boneless against the bed. Anders moves the blade a handful of centimetres down, starts to cut anew, and watches as Merrill seizes up and relaxes more deeply with each cathartic release of pain.</p><p class="western">Merrill keeps her knife sharp, and there’s very little resistance as the blade swipes a clean cut across her skin. The blood wells up and beads where Anders has cut, and shines against the black obsidian blade, against the light reddish brown of her skin. A few of the droplets cascade down the curve of her thigh, and drip onto the white sheets. So much for any lingering hopes of salvaging them.</p><p class="western">Anders cuts a third stripe onto her leg, before readjusting the knife in his hand so he can run a blue glowing finger over the first cut. The skin and muscle weave back together, easy and unblemished. And he presses the knife to bleed a new third wound under the other two remaining. From here he alternates, cutting and healing. His technique is surgical and precise, he knows. The kinds of clean cuts you make with a scalpel and make to be healed and stitched and sealed with the least amount of fuss possible.</p><p class="western">Merrill seems pleased with it though, given her little humming and pealing sighs. He checks between her legs, with his eyes first, and then the hand that’s not occupied with the knife. She’s shut pretty tight, but he only has to stick the tip of his finger under her lips to pull away a thick clear glob of slick.</p><p class="western">“Oh, you <em>are </em>enjoying this~” Anders teases. And Merrill whines in agreement.</p><p class="western">His cock bobs, as he shuffles on the bed. He could be ready for her now. But he’ll be going for a while. He’s not sure if it’s his age or darkspawn taint, but the peaks of his physical pleasure have blunted a bit over time. Less urgent, and it’s a longer climb up to them. Which is fine. It just means he gets to find other ways to amuse himself in the meantime.</p><p class="western">They say elves don’t have body hair the way humans do, but it’s not precisely true. Anders hadn’t had the time or freedom to really appreciate this on the elvhen apprentices in the Circle. But Fenris has a light smattering of peach fuzz over his chin and arms anywhere else where the lyrium lines haven’t burned it away. And Merrill has something similar down here. Anders ghosts his fingers against the grain of the vellus hairs at her groin, careful not to spread her open and rub over her clit.</p><p class="western">Merrill squirms and tries to rub her hips into his hand, and Anders pulls back simply to frustrate her. He’s not sure if it’s because she’s ticklish or aroused (probably a little of both given how she’s starting to ooze and drip) but when she speaks what comes out of her mouth is- “Nnn- Anders- The knife-”</p><p class="western">Right, he’d been neglecting that. He’s a bit lazier with it this time. He drags the blade over her in criss-crossing cuts and sawing deeper against the muscle to draw out the pain. Merrill hisses and cries out and, if he didn’t know what was causing them, her cries of pain would be indistinguishable from the ones he knows she makes when she’s being pleasured.</p><p class="western">He marks the whole of her thigh up, and heals it all at once so it’s a clean slate to muss up again. Merrill is whining pitifully, and she moans when he presses his middle and index fingers into her a little too roughly. She’s so tight, she always is, and he begins scissoring the fingers, then circling the rim of her insides and tugging her open. She clenches against him as he cuts little nicks into her thigh with the other hand.</p><p class="western">“Anders- Please-” she says, between her shudders. And Anders chuckles, and finally pulls his fingers out to rub her clit instead. He brushes over the nub, then pulls at it in gently rhythmic tugs that have her groan and melt down into the mattress.</p><p class="western">He wipes the knife against the sheets and sets it down, and leans to slide over the top of her, still rubbing at her with the other hand, penetrating her with a finger every so often just to hear her whimper at the intrusion.</p><p class="western">“How is this any different from what you’ve done here?” he asks, placing a hand gently over her right arm, and drawing his thumb up the parallel scars on its inside.</p><p class="western">It’s a little too mean of him, Anders thinks. And probably not the kind she wants him to be. He feels himself pause uncomfortably, and makes an effort to push past it. Ready for her to scold him.</p><p class="western">But instead she just sighs with weary contentment. “I got those when I was very unhappy. And when I didn’t have someone I felt I could go to to heal me up afterwards. That’s the difference, vhenan.”</p><p class="western">“…Alright,” Anders says, feeling a little flushed and a little stupid and a little in love.</p><p class="western">He reaches down between them, to position the bulbous head of his cock at her entrance. He brushes the tip of it over her lips, smearing precum over them, before teasing her entrance open with the tip. She whines a little, and he presses through the rest of her resistance and the rest of the way into her in one clean stroke.</p><p class="western">He hasn’t really prepared her enough for it, and she winces and cries a bit at the pain of the stretch. But she likes that too, and she always adjusts for him quickly enough.</p><p class="western">He pushes back up on his knees, and circles his arm around her thigh to grope fondly, before grabbing her hips and adjusting her. He can tell from the way she mewls and gasps when he’s got the right angle. And then he gets the knife again. He pulls back a bit and picks a different spot, in the crevice where her thigh and groin meet.</p><p class="western">It’s a meaner spot, more sensitive. And he only pricks her with the tip of the knife, a cut only a couple centimetres wide. But the effect is immediate. She seizes up – jolts on the bed and arches her back – and she’s squeezing him so tightly and he’s almost melting before he grabs her by the shoulder and shoves her down roughly, back against the mattress. He heals the cut quickly – it’s in a place, skin against skin, that will fester quickly if he doesn’t. And then he rearranges the knife in his right hand does it again, and feels her clench around him.</p><p class="western">“Nnn, Anders. Stop. That’s… a lot,” Merrill whines, struggling weakly against where his palm is spread over her shoulder blade. The knife and his hands are both on her. And her face is rubbing against that soft cotton. And her skin stings from where she’s bled and healed and bled again. And he is so, so thick. And so, so deep. And the stretch hurts almost as much as it makes her fingers and toes curl with contentment. Because she’s so, so full. And he has her all positioned and figured out too well, and he’s so thick every time he moves the base of his cock scrapes against her clit and sends her. “Nnn,” she squirms. “Too much.”</p><p class="western">He pulls out slowly, almost all the way, before thrusting back into her fully. And her arms braced against the sheets prevent her from knocking into the headboard.</p><p class="western">Anders runs a hand over the side of her waist. “Mmm, if you really want me to stop- That’s not the magic word, sweetheart.” But Merrill can feel him pause and still and begin to doubt himself, and he’s very silly, she thinks.</p><p class="western">She turns her head a bit more to the side, and blinks up at him dazedly. “Please?” she says. Which isn’t the magic word either.</p><p class="western">He laughs at that. “See. You’re not that far gone, sweetheart.” And then starts again.</p><p class="western">He’s pumping in and out of her, at an uncomfortably fast rhythm. And the knife’s pressed against her groin wherever he’s not – taking little slices out of her that sting and heal as fast as they appear. And she lets herself say whatever she’d like. <em>Yes. No. Stop. Slower. Quicker. More. More. Vhenan-</em></p><p class="western">“Vhenan,” she says, without really thinking about it. “The blood. I want some. Give me some.”</p><p class="western">It takes him a moment to catch her meaning, and she’s not even really sure how he comes to understand – unless she is licking her lips when she’s not paying attention. But he gets it, and he laughs when he realises.</p><p class="western">He redirects the knife back to her thigh, and slices twice across it. It’s all big inhales and exhales for her to ride through the pain, and Anders lets go of her shoulder. He’s tugging at the wound, and lets his fingers mingle with the blood, before reaching back up and holding them to Merrill’s face.</p><p class="western">His fingers are large, with short cut nails and big rounded tips. And she leans forward to take them in and suck at them. And he hooks them inside her mouth, and pries her jaw open gently. Just enough so that she pulls back to lavish them with her tongue.</p><p class="western">Anders isn’t done. And he’ll probably want to eat her out afterwards. And maybe she’ll give him that massage. Because she knows he likes to be spoiled too and the others aren’t half so indulgent with him.</p><p class="western">But in this moment she finally, <em>finally </em>has what she wants. The blood is salty and pungent, and the metallic tang of it wrinkles her nose. It is good and lovely, and she’s full and sated and done, as she laps the rest of it from the lines of his fingers and crevices of his nails and what’s spilled on the cotton sheets, and collapses.</p><p class="western"> </p>
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